Today as I was sitting in a coffee shop at Chapultepec Park here in Mexico City, I had the pleasure of witnessing a very joyous moment that happened just outside of the store. There is a permanent prop here in the park which is composed of two large bronze wings mounted on a stand, with a small platform in front of the wings for someone to stand on. When standing on the platform with your back to the wings, you are seen from the front as having wings like an angel. It is a popular place for tourists to pose for a picture doing their best rendition of an angel pose. Today however, a slow day in the park, I watched a group of 5 people pose, there were two adult women, who were here with three children with physical disabilities. The children ranging in ages from what appeared to be 10-15 years old, have physical disabilities that affect their ability to walk. They walked with severe limps and needed help with things like steps. Their adult caretakers were helping them up, one-by-one, onto the platform, so that they could pose as an angel for a brief moment, before being helped back down off the platform. Each one, having the opportunity to seemingly escape their physical reality for a brief moment, and to pose with a pair of wings. To imagine what life would be like if these wings were real. Wings that could carry them anywhere they wished, without anyone's help, wings that could eradicate their physical limitations, enabling them to soar high above the captivity of their lives on the ground. The faces of these children there posing with their pair of wings could have pulled sorrow out of the heart of any passing pedestrian. These were some of the happiest faces I have seen in some time. These faces were those of angels, not of children, faces of freedom, of pure joy.
These moments caused me to reflect on the disabilities in my life that have been known to keep me on the ground, fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of inadequacy, fear of fear even. For the majority of my life I allowed fear and insecurity surrounding my identity to keep me on the ground, afraid to take a risk, afraid to dream, to act, to live.
As one of my favorite YouTuber’s Prince Ea put it, “...it is perhaps the saddest loss, to live a life on the ground, without ever taking off.” [Watch Video] Five years ago I found my pair of wings in the Perfect Love of Jesus Christ. (1 John 4:18) The reason seeing these children’s joy had such an affect on me is because it reminded me of the joy and the freedom I have in Perfect Love, the way I was rescued by a Love so powerful that it rendered my fear powerless. Ever since that day 5 years ago, I have been learning to use these wings, some days I soar high above my inadequacies in complete joy, and other days I go through times of walking among my insecurities failing to acknowledge that I have the wings that render them powerless. Yet, everyday I get closer to complete awareness of my abilities in Christ, my freedom in Perfect Love.
President Snow in The Hunger Games said, “Hope is the only thing more powerful than fear.” I am living in an irrevocable hope, one that eliminates my fear, and gives me wings to lift myself from the depth of my inabilities, and soar!
Maybe this sounds realistic, or maybe it sounds like bullshit, but regardless I want to ask you to consider this: Is it possible that you exist for something more than a life of living on the ground? A life of just getting by? A life of coping with your fears instead of conquering them? So what about you? What chains you to the ground? What fears keep you awake at night? What insecurity keeps you from living a fully alive life? What keeps you from pursuing the crazy dreams that exist in your heart, or from exploring and discovering what those dreams are? I would really love to hear about them, to hear about you! Send me a message from my Contact Page to tell me about it! ……….I’m serious, I want to know.
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